M45 in 2022

M45 in 30 minutes at 50mm  «  Back to Gallery  »  M15: The Grandfather of Clusters   🛒 Visit our gallery of prints.

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Image © 2022 — 2023 Jeremy Likness. All rights reserved.
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Image © 2022 — 2023 Jeremy Likness. All rights reserved.
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One of my favorite winter targets, the Pleiades are easily visible as a bright cluster of stars that resemble a 'tiny dipper.' You can see their faint bluish/purple glow with the naked eye and the Seven Sisters are photogenic and multiple focal lengths. This is a series of broadband RGB long exposures to bring out the subtle dust and nebulosity that surround this young group of stars.
Telescope:   Svbony sv503 70ED
Length:   336mm
Aperture:   70mm
F-stop:   f/4.56
Sessions:   5
Captured:   2022-01-28 to 2022-09-26
Lights:   117
Exposure:   240
Total exposure:   7 h
Ra:   3h 46m 47.3s
Dec:   +24° 13' 38.148
Size:   123.916 x 106.666 arcmin
Radius:   1.363 deg
Scale:   1.899 arcsec/pixel
Related images
A steady mount and extremely clear skies gave me the conditions I was waiting for to test long (3-minute) exposures. This is just 7 of them. I purposefully increased the saturation to make this an almost celebatory looking skyscape.
Version of M45 reprocessed to reveal the interstellar dust.
40 2-minute exposures in Bortle 5.
The Pleiades, or Seven Sisters, are visible to the naked eye, resolve in binoculars and can be captured by regular cameras. This is the first time I've collected enough exposure to capture the delicate nebulosity that surrounds these beautiful blue stars.
The Pleiades is one of the closest star clusters to Earth and filled with bright blue stars.
A long exposure reveals the wispy tendrils of nebulosity that surround the major stars in M45 like a cocoon.
My favorite signal of winter is the magical faint glow that glimmers in your peripheral vision but fades to a blur when you gaze head on. Magnification reveals several bright blue stars burrowing through long filaments of ionized gas and dust. The brightest of these are the famed Seven Sisters or Pleiades.

Objects in frame:

19 Tau 25 Tau Barnard's Merope Nebula IC49 Maia Nebula Merope Nebula NGC432 NGC1435 Sterope I (21 Tau) The star 18 Tau The star Alcyone (η Tau) The star Asterope The star Atlas (27 Tau) The star Celaeno (16 Tau) The star Electra (17 Tau) The star Merope (23 Tau) The star Pleione (28 Tau) The star Sterope II (22 Tau) The star Taygeta (q Tau)
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M45 in 30 minutes at 50mm »